Fiji Times Online
April 25 2010
TV-Witness Special
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Last week Witness Special, which allows viewers to travel share the
experience of a person’s journey, brought you The Secret of Deva – the
Romanian city which is famous for its medieval castle, the legendary
gymnast Nadia Comaneci, and for its poverty.
The intimate and moving film told about two of Deva’s promising stars,
one eight years and another nine, who are enrolled in a sport boarding
school which for decades has been training world class gymnasts. It
was about innocent dreams and harsh realities that would give viewers
a different perspective on what physical exercise really means for
some.
This week though, Witness Special, lets you in on the journey of
director Ani King-Underwood.
She is Armenian by birth but grew up in Lebanon and the UK after her
family were driven from Turkey during the mass slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Armenians in 1915.
Now she is taking her mother and aunt, respectively 84 and 86 years
old, to visit for the first time the family home they were forced to
flee.
Almost the entire family of their father was massacred and their
mother’s family survived by paying off the military.
The two old ladies have never set foot in Turkey since their parents
fled but are determined to find the old family house, the church where
her parents were married and to find out what they can about their
family’s history.
* An Armenian Homecoming can be seen on MaiTV at the following times:
Tomorrow: 7am, 3.30pm.
Tuesday: 2am, 11.30am.
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